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People who worked for classical language tag to be honoured

BANGALORE: The State Government will honour over 100 personalities from various walks of life who strived for getting classical language status to Kannada at a function to be held in front of the Vidhana Soudha on November 30. They will be presented gold medals weighing 10 gm.

Announcing this at a press conference in Bangalore on Wednesday, Transport Minister R. Ashok, who is also chairman of a committee that has been constituted to select the persons to be felicitated and decide the nature of function to be organised, said the Kannada and Culture Department and the Deputy Commissioners of the districts had been asked to recommend the names of those who strived to get the classical language status to the language.

He said various writers, Kannada protagonists, artistes and journalists who launched a struggle to get the above status to Kannada by taking part in protests and campaigns and also retired judges who offered valuable suggestions in this regard would be chosen for the awards.

A high tea will also be organised for the personalities to be honoured at the Banquet of Hall of Vidhana Soudha on that day.

Similar functions would be organised at the district-level to felicitate those who took part in the pro-classical language status struggles at the district level. Each district would be given Rs. 2 lakh to hold such programmes.

Mr. Ashok said the State Government had released Rs. 20 crore for the development of the Kannada language in the wake of the granting of classical language status. The specific programmes to be taken up under this project would be decided later.

Pointing out that a writ petition had been filed in the Madras High Court with respect to the granting of classical language status, he said the Government would tae steps to have the petition disposed of. He would also hold consultations with the state advocate-general in this regard, he added.